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| From the series 'Empowering Love’, Acrylic on canvas, Ritu Gupta |
Over the last two years, personally there has been a deep
and ever growing interest in art of the present times which flows in a stream
other than the mainstream of contemporary art. The kind of art that does not
get representation in block buster internationally curated samplings of Indian
or south Asian art, yet remains deeply popular and continues to grow and
flourish. It is in fact this art that
still manages a dialogue with the sections we can call ‘popular’ or even the
middle class. When Ritu Gupta shared her
works with me the first thing that stuck me was the fluidity of her lines, and
how (inspite) of her traditional thematic matter, how the works always felt to
art of our times.
Parallel to globalization and the opening up of culture, one
of the most important cultural developments in india post nineties has been a
return to traditional Hinduism, marked by an envedours to (re)visit its roots,
myths and meanings. The shadow of this
parallelism has a strong presence on the culture of art production and
consumption in our times. Ritu’s work is heavily inspired by this schism that
marks art making of our times. Beginning as a self-taught artist, unexposed to
the great streams of modernism and post modernism changing notions of art and
taste, Ritu began her journey out of a sheer passion to paint and
decorate. I find it interesting that
though her later works tend to explore themes which are religious in nature; at
the initiation point of her journey she felt the need the need to do a series
like ‘Shades
of India’. It will be a bit off the mark to call Shades of India her
practice series…yes one does see that through this series she hones her skills,
but this was also Ritu’s first foray into artistically exploring the nature and
concept of India or Indian, personalizing it and at the same time refusing to
get stuck into one representational technique. It is not an India Ritu saw
through picture books, but the country and its villages are a integral part of
her childhood travels and its nostalgia. Stylistically the series in naïve,
reminding one of a hobby painter; however, looking at the entire series I could
not help noticing the artistic determination to learn her medium and the sheer
volume of the series speaks of the seriousness with which Ritu had begun to
approach her practice.
By the time Ritu paints her next two series ‘Shree Yantra’ and Ganesha , a sudden (remarkable) formal maturity can be seen. Though the Ganesha
series is much more playful (probably hinting at the artist’s deeply personal
relationship with the mythology and the icon), the Shree Yantra series, is
composed and shows that the artist for the first time is settling down into a
visual language. However, what is
interesting about the Ganesha series is that it marks the transition where the
artist learns the design value of form.
The iconic form of Ganesha so often loses its Puranic/mythological
character or even its Vastu symbolism and instead becomes a vehicle for
expressing the artist moods, passions and nostalgia.
The ‘Shree Yantra’
series is more complex to approach thematically . The Sri Yantra ("sacred
instrument") or Sri Chakra ("sacred wheel") is
a yantra formed
by nine interlocking triangles that surround and radiate out from the central (bindu)
point, the junction point between the physical universe and its unmanifest
source. Together the nine triangles are interlaced in
such a way as to form 43 smaller triangles in a web symbolic of the entire
cosmos or a womb symbolic of creation. Together they express Advaita or non-duality. This is surrounded by a lotus of eight petals, a lotus of
sixteen petals, and an earth square resembling a temple with four doors. The
various deities are said to be residing in the nine layers of the Sri Yantra. It represents the goddess in her form of Shri
Lalita or Tripura Sundari, "the beauty of the three worlds
(Heaven, Earth, Hell)". The worship of the Sri Chakra is central to
the Shri Vidya system of worship. The Shree Yantra, has nearly always been
depicted in geometric abstraction. Ritu Gupta chooses a figurative path, and
instead of being bogged down by the sterile geometricity of the Shree Yantra’
traditional iconography, she enters into the Shri Vidya interpretation of this concept-metaphor as coming together of Shiva
and Shakti; and her paintings represent the represents the union of Masculine
and Feminine Divine. We see a free play of myth and iconography , even moving
beyond Shiva and Shakti, we see Vishnu, Lakshmi, Parvaty-Ganesh, Kali and
various such iconographic interpolations.
The geometric mandala often becomes a (but) a backdrop…and like in the
Ganesha series, the works begin to reflect the artists understanding of
childhood, masculinity, feminity, union and desire.
As one moves from ‘Shree
Yantra’ to her latest series ‘Empowering Love’, the journey is no longer sharp
and steep. One can see the artist settling down into an understanding of human
form heavily inspired by the supple slenderness seen in the medieval Indian
styles ranging from Chola bronzes, to Kangra paintings. However a key feature
to note is that the artist does not seem to be making a school or style centric
adaptation. Instead one is reminded of the early 20th century Bengal
revivalists and their understanding of
an authentic (traditional) Indian form in terms of being soft, supple and
feminine (as against the hard(er)
masculine European understanding of
human body. This series is devoted to the romantic (divine) love of Radha and
Krishna, which in no way is explicitly referred to in iconographic terms. The
reference is implicit and subtle. The artist does away with traditional
iconography and instead chooses to focus on the mood of lovers. This series is
has very close references to the late Guler and Kangra school not so much in
treatment of foliage, moonlight and the romantic mood. Yet again, she makes this traditional
narrative her own, and by now begins to show a certain mastery over the
understanding of the human body in compositional and design terms. Her urge to
play and appropriate takes over again and she focusses of backgrounds,
detailing and decorative motifs.
One can sense that
the artist is at a brink, from here she will move forward in directions that
might not yet be apparent in her works, by now she has made her line her
own….walked the tricky grounds of working with tradition yet not becoming
sterile.
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